The only complaint to make about “Lisette Model and Her Successors,’’ which runs through Dec. 13 at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, is that Model’s own images make up barely a fifth of the 121 photographs in it. Model was a legendary teacher, and along with her own work the show includes pictures from 11 of her pupils, as well as from Leon Levenstein, who studied with Model’s painter husband. It’s an impressive bunch - among them are Larry Fink, who co-curated the show, Bruce Weber, and Diane Arbus - but it’s the teacher who commands attention in this classroom.
Model was born in Vienna in 1901. After moving to Paris in 1924, she took up photography. She emigrated to New York in 1938. Her timing was doubly impeccable. Leaving Paris when she did, she missed the Nazis. Living there when she did, she was present for a signal moment in photographic history. Andre Kertesz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Brassai were all active there - and the influence of each is evident in Model’s early work. “Man Sleeping Near the Seine,’’ from 1937, could be one of Brassai’s studies of the secret life of Paris, only transferred in this case to broad daylight. And its elegant play of curves has the compositional grace of a Kertesz.
“Composition’’ was a word Model forbade in her classes. “You are the subject,’’ she liked to tell her students, “life is the object.’’ That didn’t leave much room for such fripperies as form and design! She could afford to be so cavalier. Something like “Fifth Avenue,’’ from the late 1940s, shows what a phenomenal eye Model had. It’s a wondrously dynamic sidewalk-level view, seemingly caught on the fly. Amid multiple picture planes, horizontals and verticals snap together, just so. So do a different pair of visual elements: the mundane (pavement, flag, automobile) and stylish (a woman’s high-heeled pump, the slimness of her calf).
